18 years old & Growth Lead @ 350k+ ARR startup, steal my 5i framework

Title: 18 years old & Growth Lead @ 350k+ ARR startup, steal my 5i framework Hi everyone, my name is Phillip, and as the title suggests I’m turning 19 in April and leading growth at HeySummit. I've learned a lot about how to drive growth for a company through various great resources like Lenny’s Newsletter, YC blog posts, and my expanding network on LinkedIn. In this post, I'll be discussing my 5i framework I stole from my friends Kendall and Ted at Amazon who use it for PMing but I’ve repurposed for growth, which includes Identifying, Inspiration, ideating, Implementing, and Interviewing. I’ll be hosting Kendall and Ted for an “All Things Product Management” event on March 23rd. Free registration and details here: https://pm-speakerevent.heysummit.com/ Identify: Growing a business starts with identifying and honing in on the 3 following things to a granular level in this order: ICP Annie Pearl(CPO Calendly) discusses this at length as Calendly’s great asset while scaling. For our team, this was a matter not of entirely revamping the ICP, but continuing to hone in on precise user needs. A difference of listing out general customer segments and being able to pick out why one of two very similar potential customers does or does not fit the ICP. KPIs/OKRs After you know your best users intimately, your KPIs/OKRs give you a clear direction on where to focus your efforts and how to measure success. Right off the bat, we saw that our Trial to Paid user conversion rate wasn’t where we thought it should be due to the nature and positioning of the product relative to the user. In 2 short months we were able to boost this by 2.5%, more on that later. Disconnects Kevin Hale from YC has a great video about pricing which specifically talks measuring how long it takes users to reach the “AHA Moment” with your product. Pulling from this, we realized it took too long for users to feel they’ve gotten value, and looked outward for inspiration to broach this problem. Inspiration: By understanding what's working for competitors and in the market, you can begin ideating your own strategies. This means going out and researching what other companies in your industry are doing, reading case studies, and analyzing successful campaigns. In our case, we did complete breakdowns of competitor onboarding, homepages, and outbound efforts. I made accounts with each, documented steps, and asked questions to support and on forums. I made notes of what I liked and gaps we could fill and formulated a plan. Ideate: With a clear direction and inspiration, it's time to start generating ideas. I brainstormed with the team, reflected on user research, and asked around for ideas. The key here is to be open-minded and willing to experiment. Not every idea will work, but by trying new things, you can find what works best for your business. Many Figma frameworks came and went, but at the end of the day it was all part of the process to arrive at a winning change in the form of a new onboarding flow and feature framing. Implement: Execution, execution, execution. Speed is the biggest advantage startups have, you cannot afford to sit around thinking all day. Once you've generated ideas, it's time to start implementing them. This means creating a plan, setting milestones, and executing on your tactics. Keep in mind that growth is a continuous process, so it's important to measure the impact of your efforts and iterate as needed. We pushed to get what we ideated launched the same day even with some bugs and flaws. It helped us understand that we were headed in the right direction, and that with a few tweaks would be really powerful. Interview: Finally, it's important to constantly be learning from your customers. Conduct user interviews to understand their pain points, challenges, and needs. Use this feedback to improve your product, messaging, and overall strategy. Users helped us uncover bugs we didn’t even know existed, and make changes we didn’t know they needed or wanted. TLDR: This 5i framework for growth includes identifying your goals and target audience, finding inspiration, generating ideas, implementing tactics, and continuously interviewing customers. By following these steps, you can build a strong foundation for growth and drive success for your business. Hope this helped, happy to answer any questions below!